Google Offers Panoramic Views of Kennedy Space Center

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NASA's Kennedy Space Center turns 50 this year. And now anyone
can tour the historic spaceport from the comfort of their own
homes.

Google's Street View cars recently canvassed the facility, taking
some 6,000 panoramic images of the site. These images not only
include 360-degree views of the pathways and buildings around the
center, but also interior views of important structures within
the facility.

Users can access the collection by searching for "Kennedy Space
Center" on the Google Maps
website. Dragging the Street View peg-man icon to one of
Kennedy's main pathways starts the virtual tour.

The Street View website shows some of the featured imagery,
including the hangar bay where the Endeavour space shuttle was
stored, the Space Station Processing Facility, (for payloads
going to and coming from the International Space Station), the
Apollo/Saturn V Center, and the Space Shuttle engine shop.

The cache of images from around Kennedy is Google's largest
specialized collection to date. NASA also seems to have another
strategy in letting the Street View cars in: giving those
interested a view of the transitioning purpose of the site.

For much of its five decades, the Kennedy Space Center has played
a key role in manned spaceflight, whether it be for the Apollo
program that took Americans to the moon or the recently retired
Space Shuttle program. With NASA scaling back its efforts, the
spaceport is looking to transition into a hybrid
government-commercial launch center

This requires Kennedy's aging infrastructure to be revamped, and
Google Maps gives a street-level view of those efforts.

Chief among them is the Commercial Crew Program, a team based at
Kennedy working with private space flight companies to develop
and launch the next generation of manned spaceflight vehicles.
The hope is that with private entities taking the lead, space
exploration overall will accelerate now that government
bureaucracy is of the way.